lucius septimius 4/13/2021 5:04:03 AM

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vxbush 4/13/2021 5:19:55 AM

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In #1 lucius septimius said: That's a cute movie, though nowadays when someone says "it's Tuesday" and I replay "so this must be Belgium" I get strange looks.

Add mine to the list. I don't recognize this movie title. 

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 5:23:38 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 2:

I recognize the title, but I have never seen it.

BTW, the image seems to be protected from being embedded, but if I copy the image location and open it in another tab it shows up in both places (Chrome caches the image once it shows up)

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 6:16:37 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 3:

Image gone again

lucius septimius 4/13/2021 8:21:57 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 2:

Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 3:

It's a cute movie -- nothing particularly deep but entertaining.  Suzanne Pleshette is delightful to look at.  It really captures the essence of the whirlwind package tours of Europe that were just getting going when the movie was made.  The scene with the guy ordering "hand made shoes" in Italy was one of my dad's favorite moments in film.

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 8:47:38 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 5:

What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, bomplaining about the tea - 'Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home' - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they 'overdid it on the first day.

--Monty Python

Occasional Reader 4/13/2021 8:54:18 AM

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Occasional Reader 4/13/2021 9:02:20 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 7:

... and there is this 5’10” or taller Russian (guessing from accent) redhead in the post-jab waiting room with me who is just, WOW.  She looks like she’s about to head off to strut the runways in Fashion Week somewhere.

JCM 4/13/2021 9:14:40 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 8:

Careful Russian redheads are spies!

Occasional Reader 4/13/2021 10:17:24 AM

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Reply to JCM in 9:

well, she can keep all my secrets safe tonight. Because, nobody does it better...

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 10:42:54 AM

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Where did Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality come from?

This article traces them back to the works of Marx and Gramsci

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 11:00:20 AM

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Reply to JCM in 9:

Watch out for Iranians, too

Occasional Reader 4/13/2021 11:22:23 AM

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The ChiComs smell weakness emanating from the White House.

Or, they just smell "bought and paid for" 

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 11:45:29 AM

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Meanwhile, Israel shows what it thinks of the Iran deal

The alleged Israeli attack on Iran's Natanz nuclear facility targeted an electrical substation located 40 to 50 meters underground and damaged "thousands of centrifuges," Iranian officials revealed in recent days.

Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, former head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told Iranian media on Monday that the attack hit an electrical substation located deep underground and managed to damage both the power distribution system and the cable leading to the centrifuges in order to cut power to them.

The Iranian official stressed that such an operation takes years, saying "the design of the enemy was very beautiful."

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 11:47:29 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 14:

The US should be doing this kind of thing, too, instead of giving a country at war with us and calling for "Death to America" since 1979 the ability to carry out the threat after a few years.

Occasional Reader 4/13/2021 12:29:45 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 15:

C'mon, man, they just have different cultural norms, that's all. 

vxbush 4/13/2021 12:32:31 PM

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In #16 Occasional Reader said: C'mon, man, they just have different cultural norms, that's all. 

Does this mean that the next time someone calls me a Nazi, I can just tell them I have a different cultural norm? 

Occasional Reader 4/13/2021 12:41:00 PM

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In #17 vxbush said: Does this mean that the next time someone calls me a Nazi, I can just tell them I have a different cultural norm? 

Just take comfort in the fact that no one, ever, has fantasized about being tied up and ravished by someone dressed up as a liberal.

/stolen from P.J. O'Rourke

buzzsawmonkey 4/13/2021 2:49:17 PM

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Oh, I tried---God knows, I tried---to keep my mouth shut during Re-Education Camp.  But after an hour and a half plus of listening to crap about "microaggressions," blood and sinew could stand no more.  

We were being asked "what would you do in this scenario?"  I forget which scenario it was, but I said that politeness was the coin of civilization, and that "microaggressions" were the short road to barbarism---because politeness gives everyone an objective standard by which to comport themselves, whereas "microaggressions" merely give license to a party who wants to be aggrieved.  Politeness is what makes civilized interaction possible, while supporting and believing in "microaggressions" is what gives Ogg the right to hit Ugg over the head with a club, like a caveman.

I don't think that went over too well.  

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 2:55:17 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 19:

See this article I linked to earlier

An excerpt:

The most damaging effect of conflict theory may be the way it flattens the human experience and promotes an unrelenting view of interactions and inequality as being the inevitable outcome of individuals and groups vying for power in the context of scarce resources. Close behind this flattening is the damage done by the overinflated focus on the minutiae of the slightest verbal noncompliance, which magnifies misunderstandings and hurts and elevates extreme forms of hypersensitivity as an engine of progress.

My emphasis

Another excerpt (with my emphasis)

However, two side effects have emerged from the hegemony, to use Gramsci’s word, of this worldview. One is that conflict theory—and, by extension, critical race theory and intersectional theory—looks into the room of social problems and shines a giant spotlight on a single aspect of the human condition, yet leaves the rest of the room dark. With the light of insight shining on this one spot, we’re led to believe that all that matters for understanding human misery is recognizing the endless struggle for power between, as Marx and Engels put it, the “oppressor and oppressed”—on whatever axis that binary is construed. But where does that leave everything else that makes up the human experience?

Another

When every interaction is about power and the privilege that comes with it, conflict theory tells us that words—as our primary mechanism of communication—are the instrument of enforcing and maintaining the status quo. So, under critical race theory and intersectionality, we’re in a coiled position where our alertness to power dynamics is turned up as high as it can possibly go. We’re ready to spring.

JCM 4/13/2021 3:03:28 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 19:

You are completely wrong...

Ugg hit Ogg over the head!

;-P

Good on you!

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 3:09:11 PM

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Reply to JCM in 21:

Ugg use Thagomizer

buzzsawmonkey 4/13/2021 3:15:02 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 20: Reply to JCM in 21:

The "melting pot" concept, which the Ordained Blatherator dismissed, emphasized our similarities---of desire, of aspiration, etc.---while the "microaggression" concept seeks to divide us, ever more infinitesimally, on the basis of class, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, whatever.  And, since they are entirely subjective to the aggrieved, there is no disproving them.

I said, at one point, that the entire point of adulthood---and, by extension, college as a preparation for adulthood---was learning to deal with the minor slights and injuries of everyday interaction without getting bent out of shape about them; to try and decide which ones were, maybe, worth making an issue of (and accepting that "making an issue" might or might not have a favorable outcome), and which ones were not.  

Again, I believe my seed fell among thorns rather than fertile ground.

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 3:22:06 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 19:

The whole Critical Race Theory is crap to give the supposedly oppressed power over the supposed oppressors, as ranked by the intersectionality scale.

By insisting on being polite, you are just like a slaveowner telling the slave to call you "Massa", according to the theory.

And thus you are proving you are a racist, according to them. Note blacks cannot be racist, something that started about 35 years or more ago. 

This is all a power grab - and yet it will not give power to Blacks, but to our new oligarchy of Big Tech and Democrats, as various Tabletmag articles have said.

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 3:24:35 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 23:

The whole point of this IS to divide us. And you might as well be telling a dyed-in-the-wool Soviet apparatchik the advantage of capitalism, or an Islamicist about Judaism.

There is no fertile ground there. Others in your indoctrination seminar, maybe, but not the indoctrinator,

buzzsawmonkey 4/13/2021 3:27:48 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 24: Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 25:

On some level, though, one cannot not speak out.  Yes, I know that it is the road to the gulag, but not pushing back against these filthy whores is intolerable.

lucius septimius 4/13/2021 3:37:14 PM

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In #26 buzzsawmonkey said: On some level, though, one cannot not speak out.  Yes, I know that it is the road to the gulag, but not pushing back against these filthy whores is intolerable.

That's why one should never willingly bend the neck to these petty tyrants.  

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 3:51:56 PM

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In #26 buzzsawmonkey said: On some level, though, one cannot not speak out.  Yes, I know that it is the road to the gulag, but not pushing back against these filthy whores is intolerable.

Like having to doublethink in the Soviet system. 

However, Russians were used to being afraid of the Tzar's Secret Police; the Communists just replaced one oppressive rule from Moscow with another.

Americans are not used to it. I think there are enough Americans who will push back. Trump's election was one case.

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 3:55:11 PM

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In #28 Kosh's Shadow said: the Communists just replaced one oppressive rule from Moscow with another.

That was an observation from someone I worked with who got out of Soviet Russia, that Russians were used to being ruled from Moscow, so the revolution did not have to be nationwide. 

buzzsawmonkey 4/13/2021 3:57:00 PM

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In #28 Kosh's Shadow said: I think there are enough Americans who will push back.

We are required to fill out post-Re-Education Camp questionnaires after each session.  I've filled most of them out with "no comment," but I am sorely tempted---despite the unwisdom of such a move---to say on the last one (next week) that I have never heard so much concentrated racist garbage in my life.

buzzsawmonkey 4/13/2021 3:58:07 PM

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In #29 Kosh's Shadow said: that Russians were used to being ruled from Moscow, so the revolution did not have to be nationwide. 

The Russians had the Cheka.  We have the Twitter Blue-Cheka.

Kosh's Shadow 4/13/2021 4:01:57 PM

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Farcebook - a religious service is blocked political speech

Facebook has taken down an ad announcing Israel Independence Day prayers at the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv, claiming that the posting constituted “political advertising” and was in contravention of the social media giant’s standards

“It turns out that this is not an isolated incident,” tweeted Channel 20 reporter Kobi Bornshtein. “I have now received another case in which a page that published a religious event was blocked by Twitter on the pretext of a ‘political event.'”

JCM 4/13/2021 5:09:03 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 23:

Oldest started a new semester this week.

His first assignment in art class to write about what his "culture" is....

I sent him Whittle's Tribes to read.

I think I'll have him write that his culture is "Respect" or something on those lines. Nary a mention of anything other than what would be considered polite behaviors.